Tag Archives: unified

Upgraded

Unified Communications Manager 6.1.3, with an “engineering special” patch to quiet some database issues.

Contact Center Premium 5.0.2, now with servers spanning two locations for high availability.

Same old Unity. 🙂

What are the first things that University staff will notice on Monday morning?

  • Bugs – let’s hope not
  • Wideband audio – the new Communications Manager allows third-generation (7941/61/06 and newer) to auto-negotiate the G.722 codec between themselves, providing higher-quality audio when using the speakerphone or the handset. The standard-issue Plantronics headsets won’t do it, though.
  • User Options web site – Now it’s the User Options straight out of Call Manager, with the new Cisco interface. In the background, proxying this web site is a lot cleaner than it used to be.
  • Slight changes for ACD agents – Call center agents will see some slight changes on the phone interface including a button to log in to the “backup” ACD, to be used when the primary is not available.
  • ? – We tried to make the transition as unnoticeable as possible. There are lots of great features in the new systems that will be gradually rolled out.

On the tech side of things, we are now at a much better place in terms of supportability and upgradeability of the phone system. It provides new options for interconnection with other systems (much better SIP protocol support for example). I joked with coworkers last night that we have successfully moved from an obsolete system to an outdated system–hooray! (Currently Cisco is selling the 7.x versions of their voice products.) In reality this upgrade has brought us a long way.

Mobile Communicator presentation

I attended an online seminar today on Cisco’s Unified Mobile Communicator, Cisco’s plan to put the “unified” communications environment (corporate directory, phone, voicemail, presence, conferencing, and e-mail) all on your data/application-enabled cell phone.

You can view the product information for Unified Mobile Communicator here.

Two things make this solution unattractive.

One, it’s tightly-coupled and Cisco-proprietary. It’s locked in with Cisco’s products–Unity unified messaging, Meeting Place, and of course Call Manager. What if I want to connect to another voicemail or e-mail server? And from what I can tell from the presentation, it’s not using standard protocols such as SIP or IMAP to communicate with home base.

Two, it requires a big pile of new hardware in the datacenter to make it work. This needs to be integrated into the individual component servers (Unified Communications Manager/CallManager, Unity, MeetingPlace).

The first thing will keep Penn State away from this mobile communications solution. Penn State does not use unified messaging (our Unity setup is voicemail-only) which removes both the VM and e-mail functionality. We don’t use Meeting Place. What’s left then besides having voice capabilities? Yes, your cell phone already does that. Forward your VoIP phone to your cell and be mobile.

Mobile users at PSU can put together a suite of tools for their data-enabled cell devices to send and receive e-mail (POP/IMAP), instant-message (various protocols), and search the corporate directory (LDAP) but are for now without a way to tightly integrate with the campus PBX or voicemail.